


Linger

by YoGrossDude



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mutual Pining, Not-a-Date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 02:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21920479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YoGrossDude/pseuds/YoGrossDude
Summary: There's a few things Aloy still needs to do before she leaves Meridian.
Relationships: Aloy/Erend (Horizon: Zero Dawn)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 104





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> figured I would try to attempt this before the sony media machine revs up for hzd2

It should've been a clean kill.

The Watcher is completely unaware of her, marching along the route Aloy's Focus paints in translucent purple arrows on the sand. She hunkers low to the ground, barely even breathing as she moves from behind the boulder to line up the shot.

Three heartbeats, and it will turn to face her as it rounds the corner of its route, exposing its vulnerable eye. An easy shot, simple and clear, and she'll have what she needs.

She slinks forward to get a better angle, her bow raised and ready — and her foot kicks against a loose pebble, sending it clattering against what sounds like every stone in the Sun Furrows on its way down.

The Watcher jerks up its head at the sound and whips around to face her, its faceplates raised, the blue light of its eye snapping yellow for a brief instant before flashing into baleful red. Aloy curses under her breath and looses her readied arrow — she swears again, louder this time, when the Watcher darts to the side and the arrow thunks against the thickened armor on its left flank.

The machine growls at her, its tail twitching angrily as it stretches its neck to its full length, juts its head towards the sky. A sliver of ice slides down her spine when Aloy thinks of the pair of Ravagers prowling only a scant distance away — but she's faster than the Watcher, if only just, and sends a quick trio of arrows aimed at its long throat. One of them misses outright, the second impacts into the synthetic muscle of its throat but doesn’t hit anything vital — the third one, aimed slightly higher, pierces into a component her Focus identified earlier as W-5R738, the origin point of the Watcher's short-range wireless communications — and the entire point of this hunt in the first place.

Sparks fly up as the Watcher’s alarm cry is cut short; it staggers, reeling backwards, a brilliant flare of white light gathering near its eye — and then a new pair of arrows slam into the weakened armor on its left side. The Watcher topples over onto the ground, kicking at the air piteously, and Aloy sprints towards it, ending the hunt with a quick thrust of her spear.

She hears Erend trot up beside her, the studs of his armor clinking as he moves, his bow still half-drawn. Both of them glance warily towards the direction of the Ravagers they spotted earlier, but there doesn’t seem to be any sign of them, despite the half-second of the Watcher's call.

They’re safe. For now, at least.

Erend gives a low whistle. “Nice shot.”

Aloy grimaces at the ruined metal corpse at her feet. She yanks out her spear, the grinding squeal of metal against metal making her wince. “I missed the first one.”

“You didn’t miss when it counted,” Erend notes, and Aloy huffs a mirthless laugh.  _ Survival requires perfection _ wasn’t a universal childhood lesson, apparently. She taps her Focus to bring up a Watcher schematic. Maybe she can still salvage something useful from this failure.

Erend watches her curiously as she glides her fingers across a vision only she can see, and Aloy does her best to ignore it. According to the schematic, the W-5R738 component she was after is completely destroyed by her arrow, and her spear pierced right through the heart, likely cracking the lens as well. That leaves wires and maybe a handful of shards. Great.

“Is everything...okay?” Erend asks her. It isn’t the first time.

“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” she snaps, and immediately regrets it. Erend slings his bow onto his back and tries too hard to look unbothered.

“Yeah? Like what?”

_ Like finding out that being Anointed isn’t that much different than being an Outcast, because awe seals lips just as well as tribal law. Like gritting my teeth instead of throttling every Oseram metalseller in Meridian that smelts down something that might be important into something that explodes. Like being wrapped up in a hundred different Carja political games without knowing what’s really going on. Oh, and like trying to work out how to reconstruct the most advanced artificial intelligence ever built before another one of her renegade subroutines tries to kill us all. Did I leave that one out? _

Aloy heaves a short, frustrated sigh. “Just a lot. That’s all.”

Erend rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck, the very picture of indifference. "Couldn't have anything to do with this thing you're putting together that talks to machines, could it?"

The question catches her off-guard: she tenses, fighting to keep her face carefully neutral, her eyes fixed on the text floating in front of her.  


“What are you talking about?"  


“The Stormbird you brought down last week. Then there was the Shellwalker convoy you raided after that." He ticks them off on his fingers, looking inordinately pleased with himself, and her stomach sinks like a stone in a pond. "And now, you’ve hunted nothing but Watchers for three days, but you only want this thing.” He digs into the pouch he insisted on carrying for her, retrieving a W-5R738 component from their only success and holding it up.

“I’m no tinker,” he continues, examining the part in his hand, “but I can recognize something I’ve seen before. This thing’s the same part in the machine callers Dervahl used, probably how Watchers call out to other machines. Makes sense to me that slapping a bigger power source on it somehow would make the cry go further, so it gets some pissed off Glinthawks swooping down to investigate when you turn it on.”

Aloy gives him a sidelong glance. “And why would I want to build something that does nothing but call down pissed off Glinthawks?”

“Hell if I know.” He grins, shoulders up in an exaggerated shrug. “But you also have a spear that tames machines, right? I’ve got no clue how any of  _ that _ works, but maybe it doesn’t need a whole machine. Maybe you can do something to a single part. Like changing what the Watcher cry means, somehow.”

Aloy bites the inside of her cheek and says nothing.

“So,” Erend drawls, tossing the component in the air and catching it again with practiced ease, “Am I close?” 

She almost, almost tells him. It must’ve been obvious, because eager glint in his eyes disappears when she forces a stiff shrug as her only reply. His brows knit together, a flicker of confusion making his grin fade at the corners, and Aloy has to turn away. The sand stings her knees when she kneels down, pushing through wires so she can pretend to examine the rest of the Watcher’s shattered, worthless innards.

Erend’s gotten so many vague non-answers from her he should know what to expect by now. And every hunt, every time, he still tries to ask. Maybe he’ll stop talking to her completely after this newest dismissal, and they’ll march back to Meridian in silence. Maybe he’ll even stop coming with her altogether. Then she won’t have to worry about how to evade all his questions. She’ll be alone again.

Despite the sweltering heat of the day, the pit of her stomach grows cold.

“You know, I'm not  _ that _ stupid,” he says from somewhere behind her.

It’s a joke. She knows it is, but it doesn’t matter: anger and guilt collide together into a brutal spike of rage. Aloy whips around, bolting to stand to her full height, her hands curled into fists, and the lopsided smile immediately drops off Erend’s face.

_ “I don't think you're —” _

The words tear out of her throat, loud and furious enough to startle both of them into silence. Erend stares at her, blinking in wide-eyed alarm; it makes her insides twist up and squeeze. Aloy closes her eyes briefly, forces herself to swallow the pain in the back of her throat, to breathe. It cools the burning in her chest, a little, enough.

“I don't think you're stupid, Erend,” she says, her voice firm but without heat, now.

A long, quiet moment passes between them. Aloy watches him relax, the tension slowly leaving his shoulders as he studies her face, and something about the way he keeps staring at her makes something flutter in her chest until she wrestles it down.

“Good to know,” he says, his voice soft and a corner of his mouth pulled into a small smile, and Aloy turns on her heel towards Meridian and tries to ignore the way her stomach ties up in knots.

She hasn't told him yet that she's leaving tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never and will never learn to count, and that's a promise

It's not as though Aloy's _hidden_ her plans to leave Meridian. Lately, most of her time — and her shards — have been spent on gathering as many supplies as she can: dried meat and salt and as many small jugs for water as she can carry; a fur-lined bedroll for cold nights and thin, long cloth to keep her skin from blistering under the brutal heat of the sun; Lancehorn lenses and glittering Behemoth braids and processed hunks of metal torn from Scrapper gullets, all for putting together something she may need. More than what she could get just on her own, and there's still the chance it all still won't be enough. 

_The Forbidden West_. Somewhere in its desolate wastes is the origin point of the signal that shattered GAIA into pieces, and even CYAN’s best efforts could only give the roughest estimate of its location. Aloy has only found scraps of information about what she might find there: none of it useful, all of it disturbing. It’s difficult to tell how many of its dangers are real, and how many of them are borne out of superstition. After all, to the Carja, the west is the place where the Sun itself goes to die: a hostile, shimmering graveyard filled with hungry ghosts and endless horrors and things beyond understanding.

Aloy isn’t afraid of ghosts: she’s one herself, really, albeit made of flesh and blood. Nor is she afraid of new machines — cautious, but not afraid — as long as she can hide, as long as her Focus can tell her which parts are more likely to burn or break, as long as metal still dents and gives way under the strikes of her arrows and the point of her spear. And she certainly isn’t afraid of things that are “ _beyond understanding_ ” — for her, they don’t stay that way for long.

Starvation, thirst, exhaustion: those are the things she fears, lethal threats she hasn’t worried about in weeks. Being in Meridian so long has made her worryingly _comfortable._ Even with working with the Vanguard often — breaking apart machines that seem like they’re encroaching ever closer to the city, clearing out camps of bandits that prey on the trade roads, trying to put back together what the Eclipse tore down — she always had someone to watch her back, always ended her days with a hot meal and a safe place to sleep.

Everything is too soft now, too easy. She feels like a blade left too long without a whetstone, her edge dulled to uselessness. Could she even win the Proving now? Destroy the Deathbringer in the Grave Hoard and the legion of Eclipse that surrounded it? Fight through the endless, angry horde of machines that jealously guarded the Bitter Climb?

The fact she hesitates now is answer enough. 

But Rost’s teachings are etched into her like glyphs into stone, impossible to forget, not that she would ever want to. A few days in the wilds again — alone — will bring back her instincts, hone her back into something sharp as she heads towards the west.

She won't miss a shot again. She can’t afford to.

* * *

Erend hums some tune Aloy’s caught snatches of before in the Hunter’s Lodge as they march towards the city gates, the sunlight of the late afternoon casting long shadows. Things have been quiet since they started heading back, but not cold. She steals a glance at him when she’s sure he isn’t looking, spots the dark circles under his eyes and the thin, still-healing red line that cuts into his beard on the left side of his face. Not a wound from a machine, but from a scuffle a few days ago near the merchant’s stalls. She’s not sure yet if it will leave a scar.

Shadow Carja refugees have poured into Meridian ever since the battle, and not everyone wants them here. The Vanguard and the city’s soldiers have both put down enough fights in the streets to make everyone nervous. Most of them are from Shadowside, poor and hungry, with a few smattering of soldiers, like Uthid. None of that hasn’t stopped the whispers that say any who return are secretly plotting the city’s destruction, that the wisest thing to do would’ve been to leave the traitors to starve outside the city walls.

But Avad is not that kind of king, and he has made it clear that any who renounce his father — and pay for any crimes they committed during the Red Raids — are allowed to return. No noble from the Citadel has taken him up on that offer yet, but Aloy suspects that as things get worse in Sunfall, it’s only a matter of time. 

It’s all made Erend incredibly busy, even with the recent addition of Rodsa, the Vanguard’s freshly appointed Second. He assigns patrols every sunrise and sunset, puts himself in the spots that tend to have the worst trouble, grins and tosses his shards across the bartop every once in a while to pay for everyone’s drink. Rarely — and only at the Vanguard’s collective insistence — does he take a day to rest. 

_“Got a lot to live up to,”_ he said to her once, not too long ago, when the Vanguard desperately approached her to help convince him to sleep. _“No more playing around, right?”_

Resting isn’t _playing_ , Aloy told him irritably, and besides, for whatever reason, he always spends half his days off insistent on helping her. She refused to budge from his doorway until he stomped back to his bedroom with a heavy sigh, and only left once she heard him snoring, pleased when Rodsa later informed her he slept late into the next morning.

Someone else will have to make sure he rests enough, when she leaves.

The thought makes her pause, just as the two of them reach the city gates. This is usually where the two of them would part ways: she’d go back to Olin’s apartment to build or take stock of her supplies, and Erend would try to check in with the Vanguard before they collectively forced him to go back home. Now, however, her earlier outburst is still ringing in her ears, and that’s not…how she wants to leave things. 

So this time she turns to Erend and asks, “Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” he replies immediately — and then he stops dead, snapping his head around to stare at her in confusion. “Wait, why?”

There’s still so much she doesn’t _know_ about talking to people, how to do it right. Isn’t it obvious why she’s asking? Did she somehow ask it _wrong_? 

Aloy fights the urge to fidget ( _why is she nervous?_ ), shrugging instead, and sucks in a quick breath before plunging ahead. “I was wondering if you wanted to eat together.”

“Eat,” he echoes, like he's never heard the word before, and she watches as a wide grin slowly spreads across his face. "Yeah, okay. Eat. You and me." He clears his throat. "What did you have in mind?"

She didn’t think it was going to be this complicated. “Uh, food?”

Erend laughs. “What _kind_ of food?”

Aloy wrinkles her brow. "What _kind_?" she asks, and Erend apparently cannot _wait_ to explain.

* * *

The ball of meat on the plate in front of her is shockingly tender; it pierces immediately with the slightest poke from the prong of her fork. Aloy carves out a small piece covered in red-brown sauce, imitating the way Erend scooped both it and a good amount of the vegetables it rests on onto a spoon, and takes a dubious bite. 

It’s _delicious_. 

“Thought you’d like it,” Erend says, and he smiles at her across the table as she goes in for more. 

They’re seated together at a table at a place called “The Broken Spear.” It’s another kind of place to buy food instead of making it yourself, though different than the stands that line the streets she visits on the rare occasions she doesn’t have time to prepare her own meals. Those just serve something small or special, like the grilled meat on skewers, or the sweet, flakey kind of bread she’s sort of fond of that Erend bought her once. Here, the portions of food remind her of the feast at the Proving, and there are plenty of places for people to sit and eat it together, which makes it a kind of meeting place as well.

It’s similar to a _tavern_ , but Erend clarified that with those, the quality of the food — and the company — tended to be less important than the alcohol.

Aloy takes her next bite, this time closing her eyes to taste it better. The sauce is tangy and slightly sweet, the meat thoroughly seasoned with Carja spices that are as myriad as they are fragrant. Part of her wants to take some with her, but she doesn’t have the time or the shards to waste in the market getting something she doesn’t need. 

When she opens her eyes again, there’s a small pile of shards on the corner of their table, and Erend is looking very deliberately in the opposite direction. 

“ _Erend_ ,” she protests, frowning, gathering a handful of her own shards, but he waves it away. 

“C'mon, let me buy you one dinner,” he says. “Consider it the official Vanguard repayment for saving Meridian.” 

She smiles, despite herself. “One dinner for saving an entire city twice, huh?” 

He laughs. “At least it’s a _good_ dinner, right?” 

That’s true enough. “You said this was Banuk food?” she asks. It’s hard to believe, going by what she’s experienced while in The Cut.

“Yeah. Well, half of it, anyway.” He points behind her with his fork and Aloy turns to follow. There’s two women bustling from one end of the open kitchen to the other. Both seem busy, but not frantic: they’re wearing matching grins, chattering brightly to the people seated nearest to them even as they work. One has dark brown skin, her clothes dyed the familiar bright blue and yellow she’s seen before from The Cut; the other is pale and taller, her dark green dress decorated with simple patterns, a white stripe painted down the bridge of her nose. 

“That’s Mekali, there, in the blue — she’s Banuk,” he explains. “Named the place after her old werak. She told me once that the Banuk cook their meat soft like this to celebrate when they settle someplace for a while. Gives their jaws a rest from all that jerky. And she cooks everything with Tel, who’s Utaru; she handles the vegetables and sauce.”

“Are there more places like this in Meridian?” Aloy asks him, turning back around. “People from different tribes cooking together?”

Erend nods. “There’s a few. This place, though --” he drums across the table with his fingers — “is the best one. Probably because there’s not a single Oseram over there trying to cook anything.”

She raises an eyebrow. “What’s wrong with Oseram cooking?”

“Uh, everything?” Erend grins at her. “Unless you like your food overboiled, burnt, or bland. Don’t get me wrong — I obviously did pretty good on the stuff — but I’d never go back to it _now_.”

Aloy hums thoughtfully. She gathers a last spoonful of corn, careful to catch as much of the remaining sauce as she can with it. “I still want to try it next time.”

She looks up from her plate as she takes her last bite. Erend is staring at her.

“What?” she asks, furrowing her brow, and Erend blinks and clears his throat.

“Nothing,” he says quickly. “I’ll, uh, see if I can find some place that won’t poison us.” 

“And _I’ll_ pay,” Aloy insists, and Erend puts his hands up in front of him, palms out.

“Okay, okay. You can pay,” he says. He smiles, slowly, softly. “Next time.”

The realization of her mistake hits her like a splash of Chillwater on her skin. _Next time_ might not be for months. _Next time_ might never happen at all.

“Next time,” Aloy hears herself say, and forces herself to smile back. 


	3. Chapter 3

By the time they leave together, the sun is moments away from slipping below the horizon, the usual bustling activity of the city slowly but surely winding down alongside the daylight. Aloy hesitates a moment once they step outside of the Broken Spear and back into Meridian proper: the scent of spices from the market, the very last golden rays of sunlight on brick, laughter from a conversation she’s too far away to hear. 

Meridian has never been _home_ , really — there’s too many people, too much noise — but it has been a place she doesn’t want to forget. 

“Aloy?” Erend is giving her a questioning look, and even though she’s pleasantly full now, it’s done nothing to quell the guilt that continues to slither through her guts. 

She should tell him, if for no other reason than she might sleep easier tonight, making the journey west that much easier for herself. Aloy straightens, takes a deep breath, and stares him in the eye.

"Erend," she says, "There's something I need to —" 

A whistling scream pierces the air. Aloy whirls around, instantly searching for the threat, every muscle taut as a bowstring. _An attack?_ She'd assumed the Eclipse were decimated after the battle, their Deathbringers destroyed — could some have possibly survived? Or is this some new massive, metal killer wrought by HEPHAESTUS, plunged deep into the heart of Meridian? She has to ready; she has to _move_ — 

And then she notices that Erend is _smiling_ as he cranes his head up to look at the sky. Baffled, Aloy follows his gaze — just in time to see an explosion of several green motes of light. They burn bright and brilliant, but only for a few heartbeats, and she inhales sharply when the booming pop sounds a moment later. The people around her are cheering, some of them clapping in delight, and confusion replaces her rattled nerves. 

“What is that?” She realizes she’s clutching something; it’s Erend, her fingers digging deep into his upper arm. 

“Fireworks!” Erend tells her, clearly elated, as she quickly releases her hold on him, feeling the tips of her ears start to burn. “They must’ve finished the elevator today.” 

A new pair launches even as he speaks, sparks trailing behind them as they race up into the night, exploding into dazzling blooms of silver against the dark. Then another set, four of them, shrieking as they fly, bursting into massive orbs of sparkling red, lighting up the entire city for a brief, brilliant moment. 

It’s almost impossible to look away, but Aloy feels the crowd pressing in around her as more people start to arrive to watch the sight. Soon, it’ll start getting uncomfortable, and the idea of being squeezed together with strangers rankles her to her core. 

Aloy scans her surroundings, glancing up only once to catch a glimpse of an impressive new trio of fireworks as they burst into flashes of white. Somewhere with a clear view of the sky, away from everyone else...

“Over there,” she calls to Erend over her shoulder, pointing at her intended destination, and starts to push through the crowd, unpracticed and awkward. But determination and obvious irritation see her through, and she eventually makes her way to the half-constructed monument halfway towards the Hunter’s Lodge. 

There’s easily half a dozen of them now strewn throughout Meridian, all designed to commemorate the different tribes that have settled here to some degree, all of them in various stages of completion. This one still has scaffolding around its pedestal, and though that much looks finished, work hasn’t yet started on the statue itself, the top of the pedestal flat and featureless. That leaves more than enough room for the two of them to sit on top of it. 

Though the ladders are missing, likely to prevent someone from doing what she is right now, the scaffolding makes it a trivially easy climb. She’s over halfway up by the time she hears the telltale clinking of the studs of Erend’s armor below her. 

“Uh, I don’t think you’re allowed to do that,” he says. 

Aloy turns to look down at him, raising an eyebrow. He’s craning his neck to look at her, tilting his head. “Why not?” 

“The Carja usually don’t like people climbing all over stuff they’re building,” he tells her, and Aloy shrugs as best she can while hanging from the side of an incomplete statue. 

“You could always arrest me,” she suggests, much to Erend’s apparent amusement, but that fades immediately when he finally realizes she hasn’t moved, waiting for him to join her, jerking her head towards the top when she catches his eye. 

“Oh, no no _no_ ,” he says, shaking his head. “Prefer to keep my boots on the ground, thanks.” 

Aloy gives him a look. “What, you’ve never climbed before?” 

“Are we counting stairs? Because if we’re not, then no.” He frowns at her dubiously when she rolls her eyes. 

“It’s not that high up,” she tells him, because it isn’t. It’s ten feet at most. 

“Maybe not to _you,_ ” he counters, and when he still doesn’t move, she sighs, clambers down a few feet, and stretches her hand towards him. 

“You won’t fall,” Aloy says. “I’ll make sure.” 

Erend still looks uneasy, but he takes her hand all the same, and it’s warm even through his gauntlet. Aloy shows him where to find the right handholds and the places to put his feet — though she has to do it four times, every time — and Erend eventually makes it to the top, slightly out of breath and with a final, clumsy effort that makes her smirk impossible to hide. 

“Fire and Spit,” he murmurs, as a new set of fireworks explode into the vast expanse of the sky above them, and Aloy makes a soft noise of agreement. He turns to face her, his face already split with a wide grin. 

“Okay, so maybe this was a good idea,” he allows. “But I’m never climbing anything again.” 

Aloy scoffs, though it’s half a laugh. “Was it worse than fighting an army of Eclipse?” 

Erend shrugs. “Wasn’t too worried about that one,” he says breezily. “I knew we’d win.” 

She arches an eyebrow, but she can’t stop the half smile that curls a corner of her mouth. “Really?” 

“Well, yeah.” His tone is light, but his eyes are unusually serious. “We had you.” 

Every wry reply Aloy has at the ready dies instantly on her tongue, her mouth working soundlessly for a moment as she stares at him, feeling her face grow warm. But he’s already turned away from her, looking up back up at the sky, whooping in delight at the chaotic splashes of color and thunderous cacophony of what seems like a hundred fireworks all going off at once.

Aloy tries to watch them, but her gaze keeps going back to Erend, for some reason: his strange hair and grey eyes and the red line on his cheek (she doesn't _think_ it will scar). 

_I’m leaving tomorrow_. 

The thought makes something in her chest twinge and ache now, like a wound in a dream, and it lingers there, heavy and hurting, even after the fireworks finally come to an end.

* * *

“Why is going back down _worse_?” Erend complains, still hanging awkwardly from the pedestal’s scaffolding, and Aloy gives an irritated _tsk_. 

“Maybe you should jump,” she tells him, half-seriously. "It'll get you down faster." It’s already taken him three times longer than her to climb half as far, and the night isn’t growing any younger. 

He stops his painfully slow, ungainly descent long enough to flash her a grin. “Only if you catch me.” 

Aloy crosses her arms over her chest, glaring up at him from the ground. “Or I _could_ just leave you up there.” 

“Please don’t.” He tries to step down to the next rung of the scaffolding, but he misses it, yelping when he almost slips, and Aloy rolls her eyes, climbing up again to guide him back down.

The relieved sigh Erend heaves when he’s back on the ground is heavy enough that Aloy can't help an exasperated smile. He catches it before she can hide it, smiling back, and her chest flutters again, just like this morning and just as hard to ignore. 

_You haven't told him yet,_ she thinks, and it kills every trace of warmth within her. 

"I'll walk you back to your place," Erend offers. It’s _Olin’s_ _place_ , even though he’s never returned to it, but Aloy’s corrected Erend a hundred times now and it’s never stuck. "Unless there’s more climbing." 

"Only if you're counting stairs," she replies, his low chuckle making her stomach flip the same way when she misses a handhold, and the two of them set off together, side by side. 

They talk as they walk down the dark and mostly empty streets towards Olin’s old apartment; she suspects Erend has a personal vendetta against quiet sometimes. He always seems to want to know what she thinks, whether it's about the food they just ate, or how well Rodsa’s been taking charge, or if shock or freeze arrows are better at taking down Tramplers (it’s neither — two tearblast arrows on its underside will do the job fine). At least these are questions she can answer, so she does, the conversation flowing easily between them until they come to a sudden, jarring stop in front of the apartment door. 

“Well,” Erend says, after a brief, awkward silence. “Here we are.” 

Aloy turns to look at him, surprised when she realizes how close they are. She’s not sure when she drifted closer to him on their way here, but she’s well within his personal space, close enough to feel the heat from him. He shifts, a little, but he doesn’t step away, and the next breath Aloy draws is shaking. 

An unfamiliar warmth blossoms under her skin, her stomach tingling. It feels the same as that breathless, heady moment right before she leaps from a Tallneck: when everything is so clear and real it’s impossible to think of anything other than _now_. Aloy studies his face, her gaze inexorably drawn to his mouth, the way his lips pull into a smile.

What it would be like, if she kissed him? Terrible, most likely — she doesn’t have any clue as to _how_ , other than the most basic idea. And she’s sure Erend’s done it three or fourteen or two-hundred times, however many times normal people who weren’t Outcasts since birth kissed someone else. He’d know it would be her first attempt the instant she clumsily mashed their mouths together, flailing her hands without knowing where to put them. He’d know that she was doing it all wrong. 

And yet, there’s still a slow pull of heat low in her belly when she imagines closing the little space between them, like she wants to. His lips would be soft, she thinks, though his beard would catch on her skin. She'd loop her arms around his neck ( _is that right?_ ) and feel his hands against her spine when they'd start to curl together, and every breath would be filled with the scent of him: worn leather and woodsmoke and the faint tang of fresh steel.

It might be nice. It might even be _good_. But beyond that moment is a void, a chasm too deep and wide it for her to cross. She doesn’t know what would happen after, what he would say or think or do, and that terrifies her more than anything the Forbidden West could hold.

Aloy wrenches away from him, his obvious confusion sending a sharp pang right through her chest, and she clenches her fists until her nails dig deep into her palms. But she doesn’t look away from him, meeting his eyes. He deserves that much, at least. 

“I’m leaving Meridian,” she says, and Erend staggers like he’s been struck. 

“Oh.” His voice is small, a breath of a noise. He swallows, his gaze dropping to the ground, and doesn’t look at her. “When?”

“Tomorrow,” she says, lets the bitter taste of the word fill her mouth. Apparently, that wasn’t the answer he was expecting; Erend startles and meets her eyes again, but his surprise rapidly cools into something brittle and cold. 

“Tomorrow,” he repeats. He runs a hand over his face, stepping back, away from her. “Morning?”

“If I can.” Her heartbeat is pounding in her ears, worse than from running, and she watches Erend slowly shake his head his head and huff a small, mirthless laugh. 

“So, did you plan on telling anyone, or did I just get lucky?” he asks bitterly, and her stomach twists and her throat feels dry despite swallowing twice. “Does Talanah know? Avad? What if I didn’t see you today? I’d just go looking for you tomorrow and find out you were gone?" 

They both know what the answer is, but Aloy can’t bring herself to say it, so she tries to say something else instead. “Erend —” 

“Where are you going?” he asks sharply, suddenly. 

She briefly digs her teeth into her bottom lip. “I can’t tell you.” 

He looks hurt by that. She tries to convince herself it doesn’t bother her as his brows knit together and gives her a critical look. 

“Why are you leaving?” 

Aloy narrows her eyes, but Erend doesn’t even blink. “I can’t tell you,” she says again, though this time her voice wavers at the end. 

“ _Aloy_.” He heaves a quick, frustrated sigh, rakes his fingers through his hair. “Just give me _something_ ,” he says fiercely, but his eyes are pleading. “A reason. Hell, a direction. _Anything_.”

"You're angry,” she says. It comes out wrong: biting, an accusation, even though she expected this, even though she knew all of this was a mistake. She should’ve just left before sunrise without saying a word. She shouldn’t have told him anything. 

He barks out a choked, awful laugh. "Yeah, I am.” He searches her face for a long moment, though Aloy doesn’t know what he hopes to find there. 

“It’s that crazy to you, huh?” he asks her, his tone acrid. “That someone might care about where you are? What you're doing?” 

“ _Yes_ ,” she snaps, because Erend’s never been ignored, never been shunned, never been _motherless._ “Outcast at birth, remember?” 

Erend’s expression abruptly softens, his throat bobbing with a hard swallow. 

“But you’re not anymore,” he says, no longer angry but no less passionate. “And you never were here.” He sets his jaw. “I don’t know why you keep acting like you still are.” 

The words strike like arrows and her temper flares, hot and vicious, just like this morning all over again. 

"And what’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, the edge in her voice sharp enough to cut her, too. 

“You barely talk to anyone. The only time anyone sees you is when you’re in the market, or if they just so happen to catch you on your way out to a machine hunt and you let them tag along. You’re building something, and I know it’s important, but you won’t tell anyone what it is. And now you’re leaving for some place you won’t tell anyone about, and no one’s allowed to know why." Erend ticks them off on his fingers, one by one, another echo of the morning, and each one somehow stings worse than the last. 

"You push everyone away, keep yourself apart." He's not angry — it's something different, confusion and concern twisted tight together. "And I don’t know if it’s because it’s just what you’re used to, or if it’s what you really want.” 

He keeps _looking_ at her like it hurts him, but he doesn’t drop his gaze, even though she wants him to, more than anything. “You don’t have to be alone anymore, Aloy," he says, low and soft. "Even if you think you do.” 

If only that was true. 

Part of her wants to finally tell him about the Old Ones, about Project Zero Dawn, even if would break apart everything he thinks he knows about the world, even if it means that he’ll never look at her the same way ever again. Part of her wants to raise her voice, to make this a fight, to make him hate her before she leaves to make it that much easier for both of them. Just like last time she had to leave a place that was almost home, when Rost left her at the gates of Mother's Heart, when he watched with sad, weary eyes as she called him worthless and threw his murdered daughter's necklace into the dirt, and never saw her pick it back up again. 

Aloy squeezes her eyes shut to stop them from burning, pulls apart the dull, brutal ache inside her chest, trying to get to its heart.

She doesn’t _want_ to leave. But out there, out west, is the thing that tore GAIA into pieces, and finding it might be the only way Aloy can get enough answers to put her back together again. 

It’s a chance to heal the world. It’s a chance worth leaving for, even if no one else will ever understand.

“I can’t stay,” Aloy says finally, meeting his eyes, and every word is a dagger that stabs its way out of her throat. “I have to go alone. And I can’t tell you why.” 

She hesitates. It’s the edge of a cliff, a taut bowstring, the heartbeat before a Watcher calls. A moment right before everything changes. 

“But I want to show you something, before I go.” 

Erend stares at her, confused and hurt and maybe bitter, but Aloy holds her breath and waits, hope and dread and guilt all warring inside her. For a long, terrible moment, and she thinks he might turn away, that he might leave her, but Erend nods after a long moment, slow but sure. 

“Okay,” he murmurs, and something inside of her breaks, a little. “Lead the way.”

Wordlessly, she turns around, leads him away from Olin’s apartment and through the dark and empty streets, past the gates of Meridian and into the village, and hopes that this isn’t a mistake, too. She walks until they reach a pile of leaves and branches sewn into a netting of thick rope and machine wire, and then she lifts it away and puts it aside. Under the net, hidden beneath it, is a slab of metal, hewn from a part of a Stormbird’s wing, and Aloy pauses and takes a breath and slides it aside before she can stop herself. 

It’s crude. It can’t be anything else. But it matches the schematic CYAN showed her well enough, and she knows it works. There are two neat, linked rows of modified W-5R738 components within a Shellwalker container that sits inside the hole she dug into the earth, attached to a large power cell. Aloy hears Erend inhale sharply behind her when she crouches down in front of what she’s built.

“It’ll keep the machines away from Meridian,” she says, studying his face as she speaks. His jaw is slack, and his brow is furrowed and his eyes keep running over the mechanism again and again. “You _were_ close, this morning. I…changed the Watcher parts so it tells machines to stay away.” 

Aloy bites her cheek and weighs her words as carefully as she can. “The Derangement is going to get worse, soon. I don’t know when, and I don’t know where they’ll come from first, but there will be new machines, and they’ll be more dangerous than anything anyone’s seen before.” 

"How —" Erend bites off his own question. He turns to look at her. "What do you need me to do?" 

“I need you to make sure it stays working,” she tells him softly. “This one, and the one in the Sacred Lands, if you can. It’s near Mother’s Heart; I marked it with a Lancehorn head. There’s more Watcher parts in Olin’s basement I changed that can replace these. It’s not hard to do.” She lifts one of the components out to show him how it’s wired to the others with Bellowback braids, the places where she’s linked them to the Stormbird’s heart. 

“The power cell should be fine, but I don’t know how long the Watcher parts will last. A couple months. Maybe three.” She swallows. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.” 

Erend stares at her in silence for a long while. She can almost see the hundred different questions he wants to ask, watches him settle on the one he thinks she’ll answer. 

“But you _will_ come back?” he asks her, hopeful and quiet and her chest stings and twists and _aches_. 

“I’ll try,” Aloy tells him, because that’s all she can do, but she stands back up, closes the space between them, and Erend doesn’t move away. 

She leans against his chest with a soft sigh, all of her uncertainty leaving the moment she feels his arms wrap around her as he holds her close. She can hear his heartbeat even through his armor and every breath she draws is filled with the scent of him: worn leather and woodsmoke and the faint tang of fresh steel.

“You better,” he says fiercely, slightly muffled by her hair, and Aloy smiles.

“I will,” she tells him, and it’s almost a promise.

Tomorrow, Aloy will leave Meridian, just like she planned, taming a Strider before the sun rises and loading it down with her supplies. Tomorrow, she will ride towards where the Sun goes to die, into a thousand unknown dangers, and she will not look back. Tomorrow, she will grit her teeth against scorching heat and killing frost and every muscle, every instinct, every inch of her will be brutally, painfully tested.

But it’s not tomorrow, not yet, and so Aloy closes her eyes, pressing her face against Erend’s warmth, and she thinks it feels like _home_.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see you guys in horizon twoooooo


End file.
